


London Is...

by VinHampton



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 03:58:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1730291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VinHampton/pseuds/VinHampton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stream of consciousness on home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	London Is...

London is a little girl.   
She knows about wars and soldiers, about numbers and letters. London takes her seat on the stage and plays her music. The sounds rush through the streets, hammers striking chords, Union Jack, union workers striking, hammers, working; alright me, fuckyouJack. The white and black still separated, gazing at their navels but they could make an impeccable sonata, together. London at night is quiet, too quiet, and dreams of ancient history, of Roses, of knights and moated castles. London struggles to keep her eyes open and falls asleep to the sounds of unhappy marriages (one in two). London is alive with the sound of play and the pavements rushing crushing underfoot. Hide and seek. The city stops at the end of Curzon Street, then loops in on itself again and again like a Mobius strip. The world outside that remit is forbidden and so it is powerful and magical and it calls out. London loses some of that red brick, some of that Victoriana, and she becomes grey and stony and stormy when the strange fruit hangs from her tree – a swollen bauble of a head, arms like deadwood at the side, face contorted in the throes of Fear and Death and the smell of piss and carob. (Mother, should I build a wall?)

 

London is a teenage runaway.  
London whispers at you on every corner and holds out her hand to reveal the goods – best this side of the Thames. And the Thames is viscous and flows like viscera, and walking over bridges hurts when there are holes in your shoes. London is Paris is Rome is Babylon, unreal city. London roots through heaps of stony rubbish, clutching at buried treasure, batting away syringes, holding smoke in her lungs to the count of five. Puff, puff, pass. London is a network of friends and ghosts. London is a broken hymen and your first cigarette. London is so high she just wants to dance. London is hunger, roaming the streets. Hunger is London and hunger is hollow and loneliness is a sort of hunger also. 

 

London is a young bride.  
She carries a bouquet of hyacinths, takes a man into her heart. London vows to love and to serve, in sickness and in health, for eternity. London marries you, makes an honest man of you. London is faithful and kind, London bears her crosses. London can take a beating or two. London is brave and strong in the face of changing tides and soldiers citing love as a reason for violence. London is patient, London will listen, and she will suffer, and she will hold you while you sleep, safe in the sounds of her central nervous disorder. In London, bruises blossom like urban flowers. London will love you so much, she knocks the air right out of you. London will demand everything from you. London will not stop until you are safely in the earth, away from harm, unable to harm. (I think we are in rats’ alley, where the dead men lost their bones). 

 

London Bridge is falling down.   
Moscow speaks in tongues. Moscow is a matryoshka, a secret within a secret within a secret. Moscow fears death by water. Moscow is cold, colder than anything, and Moscow casts the sins of the flesh out of the cushioned candlelight and into the stark fluorescence of offices. Moscow is not like the others, just does not belong. She carries firearms and the burden of her charms. St Basil’s Cathedral tempts like a carousel, and the river teasestaunts all the way down the embankment, then spreads its mouth, vomiting traffic up into the Red Square, selling sex outside the golden domes of Christ the Saviour. Moscow is a loaded gun, Moscow is a bullet to the brain, Moscow is fucking, car chases, food, vodka. So elegant, so intelligent. And Moscow is the drawing down of blinds, the smell of clean sheets. Moscow is poached eggs for breakfast and Dostoevsky for dinner. Moscow cries the Moskva dry, then aims at its lover’s heart and pulls the trigger.

 

London calling  
Because London never leaves you, but haunts you like the ghosts of Christmases that will never be. And in the end, you will always return to London, be it in a carriage or in a coffin. London spreads its avenues and greets you like a mother, then offers you yet another death. London is mirrors and memories; the faces of your friends on every plaque, in every archway. London is showing you photographs and demanding that you connect the dots. Sweet Thames run softly, offering half-digested artefacts – bottles, syringes, shoes, bodies or other testimony of summer nights. And while London robs you at gunpoint and shoves you into a hospital bed and leaves you so hungry and so lonely, you still claim yourself a daughter of the city and proclaim your undying love to the grey pavements and museums and secret passageways and the Union Jack (fuckyouJack) and the newspaper print, the Tube, the radio, the Queen. You memorise the city. You will yourself to be a love letter to the city, which is trying to kill you. Because you will return to this fine British soil one day, you will be digested, you will become London, you will become the trees and the worms and the breaded cod and the newspaper print. You will not see the hanged man – HURRY UP, PLEASE, IT’S TIME – and you will haunt your daughters and your daughters’ daughters. You will be part of this great nation, a rotting contribution and the source of the stenches in the sewers. (He who was living is now dead, we who were living are now dying, withalittlepatience).


End file.
